News

The day of data: What we learned from a deluge of government statistics and announcements

Government departments and parliamentary bodies have this morning published a series of announcements, statistical datasets and reports.

Here is a round-up of what’s been released.

1. Proportion of exam papers modified for accessibility up 26%

According to data published today by the exams regulator Ofqual, there has been a dramatic 26-per-cent rise in the proportion of GCSE, AS and A-level exam papers that were adapted to make them accessible for candidates with a disability, illness or special educational needs in 2016/17.

This leap is due largely to a rise in the use of “non-interactive” electronic question papers.

2. Ofsted stats shake-up will drop ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rate by 2%

A consultation published this morning states that Ofsted wants to make the changes to its statistics in order to make its data more comprehensive and accessible.

One proposal is to include the previous ratings of schools which become an academy or are taken over by a new sponsor, wherever possible.

The change would mean a two-point decrease in the percentage of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ primary schools, and a three-point decrease among secondary schools. Combined, the drop will be two percentage points.

4. Government misses teacher training targets

The data released today shows teacher supply model (TSM) targets were missed across the board, despite the fact that the overall number of people beginning postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) courses rose by 1,145 from 26,750 last year to 27,895 for 2017/18.

In the same period, the TSM target has increased by 1,670.

5. Nick Gibb responds to MPs on grammar schools

Nick Gibb has written the government’s response to a parliamentary committee of MPs who investigated the plans for grammar school expansion earlier this year.

In his 986-word response, the schools minister only briefly mentions selective schools and does not commit the government to any position on their future.

6. Reception attainment gap widens

New data on the early-years foundation stage profile shows the attainment gap between the lowest-attaining 20 per cent of pupils and all pupils widened to 31.7 per cent this year, up from 31.4 per cent in 2016.

7. Government blames MATs for early failings

In a rare criticism of the academies sector, the government has accused multi-academy trusts that faced difficulties in the early days of the programme of failing to prepare for their own growth.

In its response to the parliamentary education committee’s inquiry last year into MATs, the DfE claimed that where trusts in the early days of the academies programme grew quickly and had difficulties, size on its own was “not the determining factor”.

Instead, those trusts “failed to put in place the robust structures, systems, and process that were necessary to be successful given their scale and stage of growth”.

To my mind it’s shared blame. The DfE allowed them to grow as quickly as they did, but didn’t force them to do so. Such rapid expansion was driven by the MATs themselves.
Not every early MAT grew big and fast, and some of the MATs that did do so put in place robust structures that were appropriate for their size on an ongoing basis.

Mark – it is, of course, shared blame. But the DfE is offloading blame onto the MATs alone. Former SoS Michael Gove said in 2011 he would let MATs grow at the ‘fastest sustainable rate’ (see Hansard 19 July 2011).
In 2013, the Academies Commission warned that some chains were growing too quickly.

Also in 2013, rapidly-growing MAT TKAT said it had been ‘guided’ by the DfE to take on more schools (TKAT written evidence to Education Select Committee November 2013). In July 2014 Ofsted criticised TKAT – one of its criticisms was that TKAT had offered weak support in the early days of its development.

E-Act, AET, CfBT, WCAT all expanded rapidly. All have given up some academies (in WCAT’s case, all of them are being rebrokered).